VANCOUVER — Drew Urquhart’s basketball canvas is already so vast, that when he was asked to change the look of its landscape he had no trouble finding the appropriate inspiration.
For the good of his team, the immensely talented, 6-foot-8 Grade 11 guard with Vancouver’s No. 5-ranked St. George’s Saints was told in the fall by veteran head coach Bill Disbrow that his size was needed inside.
Despite his future projections as a big guard at the university level, a future that already includes interest from NCAA Div. 1 schools Utah, Utah State and Boise State, Urquhart never questioned his assignment. He stepped into the paint, happy to be painted by the same figurative brush which distinguished some of Disbrow’s past star pupils from a 34-year run at the helm of the Richmond Colts.
“The reality is, my best-ever post players have all gone on to be guards in university,” Disbrow explains, mentioning Urquhart in the same breath as ex-Richmond standouts Ron Putzi (New Mexico State) and Brian Scales (UBC). “We still develop all of those (guard) skills, we encourage him to bring the ball up on the break, and we run plays for him on the perimetre. But we’re lucky he has the temperament and attitude that he does, because for us to be successful, he has to spend a lot of time inside.”
If anything, the change in geography has upped the grit level of the Kelowna native, whose family moved to Vancouver prior to the start of his Grade 10 year. St. George’s, which opens play tonight in the regional round of the Lower Mainland championships hosting the winner of Wednesday evening’s Burnaby South-David Thompson clash, has won eight of its past nine games against B.C. competition, and Urquhart is getting more and more used to the rough going inside, averaging 25 points and 11 rebounds on the campaign.
“I want to win provincials more than anything,” says the baby-faced Urquhart. “So whatever coach tells me to do, I will do it. He speaks with such confidence that you can’t not trust him. And I know that he has won a lot of championships.”
Five to be exact, and over 38 seasons of coaching, Disbrow says that Urquhart is one of the most special players he has worked with.
“I know and he knows that he is going to be a perimetre player,” continues Disbrow. “But he is learning to stay in there and pound it to the basket. He certainly doesn’t dislike it, but it’s not his natural tendency. His natural instinct is still to go away, to go outside. But he’s learning and he is a very effective player in the post.”
Urquhart, who hones his game with the allBall club program in the summer, is about as humble as they come. But even he couldn’t contain the excitement that came with opening his very first letter of interest from a university basketball program.
“Once I got a package from Utah State, that was the best day of my life,” Urquhart explains. “Then after I played in a tournament in Seattle, I got letters from Boise State, Utah. For two or three weeks I was getting a couple of calls a week from colleges showing interest.”
Urquhart, of course, still has one more season of high school basketball remaining. But he isn’t putting a cap on anything his current team can achieve, largely he says, because of the camaraderie they feel for each other, a bond strengthened through the team’s tour of China over the holiday season.
“We’re all just brothers,” he says of the entire roster, including the likes of Deklan Chung, Will Chamberlain and Tylon Barker. “We all love each other, and there is no one I can’t trust.”
And that makes Urquhart’s willingness to embrace a key positional change on the floor so much more easy to understand.
Disbrow himself admits: “This is one of the closest teams I have ever coached. Earlier today, I was trying to figure out who the most popular player was on our team, and it was seven kids. It could be any one of seven.”
The post-season is going to go a long ways in helping Urquhart mature into the kind of player Disbrow envisions him to become by the time he graduates high school in 2014.
“He is going to have to be a 6-foot-8 horse for us next year,” the coach says. “(A player) that will be the best in the province.”

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Head of the Class 2014

Recognizing courage and commitment in high school sports. For details click here.